


You Must Rise

by quilfish_swan



Category: Naruto
Genre: 12-year-old Itachi, 15-year-old Shisui, Angst, Crows, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Sad, Shisui's death, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:15:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25838644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quilfish_swan/pseuds/quilfish_swan
Summary: At the waterfall, Shisui tips backwards. Itachi leaps after him.(Or, Shisui's death, and the hours after.)
Relationships: Uchiha Itachi & Uchiha Shisui
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	You Must Rise

**Author's Note:**

> Shisui's death, but a little bit different, because who cares about the canon, anyway.
> 
> I've been making edits to this for a while, adjusting and adding things. It's a bit different than when I first posted it. Thank you for reading :)
> 
> See end notes for more edits....

He hears Shisui's words, but he can't make them register.

"You're my best friend. The only one I can count on."

Itachi's heart is pounding in his ears, nearly drowning out the waterfall. This isn't how it’s supposed to go. 

"Shisui..."

Itachi steps forward, and Shisui steps back. _He's too close. He's too close to the edge._

"Please protect the village."

They're supposed to do that together. This isn't right...

"Shisui, don't—"

"Protect the Uchiha name."

"I can't do this without you."

Shisui smiles, and it's all wrong, because there's blood dripping from where his eyes should be, and he knows what's about to happen, but he's _smiling._

"You can. You're strong. I believe in you."

_No. I'm not. No, no, no..._

As Itachi lunges forward, Shisui falls.

Itachi hears himself scream.

His body moves on its own.

He leaps over the edge, stabs a kunai in the cliff to slow his flight to the river. (He shakes away a memory of a fateful day seven years ago, when he'd stuck knives in a nearly identical mountainside after falling, falling, falling and deciding he wanted to live after all. The irony is just too much.)

He's not fast enough. Shisui hits the water. Itachi is less than halfway down, and his whole body flinches violently. There’s no way he survived it, he knows, but he doesn’t stop.

_I have to get to him._

When only a short distance remains, he dives.

His vision is swirling red now, and it _stings._ Traces of Shisui's chakra are like ribbons in the water, and he follows them.

_I'm not ready._

It's so cold but all he can think about is getting to Shisui, so he forces himself down further until he sees him, surrounded by thin wisps of his soft, familiar green glow, rapidly fading.

_Please, let me get to him._

They’re nearly at the bottom. Itachi stretches, grabs Shisui’s wrist and _yanks,_ hugs his chest with one arm. He pushes hard off the rocks, propels himself up, and claws his way through the water.

It's _so cold_ and he's almost out of breath and for a moment he thinks it will be better if he just stops, sinks back the way he came, slowly succumbs to the river.

He fights upward.

Itachi breaks the surface, drags Shisui to the narrow shore on the other side. He nearly snaps, because he's only twelve and he's still skinny and Shisui has always been bigger than him.

He doesn't check for a pulse, because he already knows. Itachi forces himself to breathe.

He feels dizzy, _sick._ A single sentence assaults his mind.

_Shisui killed himself. Shisui killed himself. Shisui killed himself._

A weak whimper escapes him. In a daze, he crumples onto Shisui's chest, clutches him tightly.

 _Shisui killed himself._ And then— _I didn't stop him. I killed him. I killed Shisui._

His ear is above Shisui's heart, and there's no steady thrum of a beat, like he's used to. He'd known there would be none; the source of Shisui's chakra signature blinked away moments after he'd hit the water. But for some reason, this is the moment where Itachi breaks.

That's when the sob caught in his throat rips free.

It's an ugly, inhuman sound. Tears follow, hot against his skin, ice-cold from the river. _I'm crying,_ a faraway part of him notes with vague surprise. More violent sobs follow, one after another, until his entire body is shaking. When was the last time he wept this way? He doesn't know if he ever has.

All he knows is that he's saying Shisui's name, but it sounds like it's someone else's voice. He's repeating it, as if saying it enough times will breathe life into him again, and they can both go home, together, whole.

But Itachi is not whole, not anymore, and he thinks he may never be again.

He can't stop trembling, from the wind on his wet clothes and from terror, alike.

_(I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready.)_

The whole world is red.

In the morning he wakes and hears the waterfall. 

He's still at the bottom of the canyon, with Shisui in his arms.

He jolts up and realizes he's surrounded by crows, which startle and flutter backwards with his abrupt movement. _Shisui's crows._

"I'm sorry," he says, and his voice sounds raspy and not like himself. He beckons the birds over again. As they nudge their master's body looking sad, reality hits Itachi once more like a blow to the chest that takes his breath. A wave of nausea floods him.

_I killed him. I killed Shisui._

Itachi backs away, vomits into the rocks.

The crows don't leave, and Itachi is grateful. He's grateful that he doesn't have to be completely alone, that he's not the only one who's lost someone precious. There are eight of them. He remembers all of their names, but not who is who. Shisui always had to remind him. Now he'll never know.

He cradles Shisui's head in his lap for too long. 

Shisui would tell him to return his body to the river, but Itachi doesn’t want to. 

He’d tell him to let the scene play out like a normal suicide, return to the village, act surprised when confronted with the note he’d undoubtedly written saying what he would do and where and for what, which Itachi knows he can do, mostly. 

But he cannot bear the thought of abandoning Uchiha Shisui’s body to be washed up somewhere and found by strangers days from now. He can’t. He will not do it.

Itachi’s ability to swiftly seal away his own feelings so that he may do the hard thing, the right thing, _the thing that needs to be done,_ has always served him well, but not this time. 

This time, and only this time, he’ll do what he wants.

He’s going to burn him, give him a proper Uchiha burial. 

He’ll protect his body from whatever the clan or the village or anyone else might want with it.

But even with his determination, even though he knows it’s more bearable than any alternative at this point _(This point... how has it come to this point?),_ it takes hours to muster the will.

The sun is in the southwestern sky when he touches Shisui's cheek, kisses his forehead.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” he whispers.

He takes a shaky breath in and steadies himself on the exhale.

"Come on," Itachi says to the crows, gently guiding them off the broken body. They hop right back. 

"Come on, now," he says, more firmly. They move when pushed, but flap back again. 

"Come on, I have to do this!" It's much louder than he intends, and his voice breaks. The crows scatter and find rest in a nearby tree. The tears are back, and he can't do it. He can’t do this. He can't do any of it, not without Shisui, and yet, he must.

He clasps Shisui’s hand in both of his own, bringing it to his lips for a last lingering kiss before setting it down tenderly at his side. 

He stands and steps away.

It will be the first time he uses Amaterasu. 

He has the Mangekyō Sharingan now, he can feel it—his dearest friend’s last gift to him.

( _I killed him. I killed Shisui._ )

His first act with his new eyes will be erasing the giver’s body from the earth.

If he hesitates, he’ll never do it, so he panics when it takes a few tries for the black flames to materialize. (Under other circumstances he’d be easier on himself, but right now he doesn’t have the patience or the will. If he doesn’t get it right soon, it may take hours to work up the strength to try again.)

His fourth attempt is successful, and the sharp pain in his eyes startles him.

Itachi blinks away blood and tears. He mutters a prayer that he learned from his mother.

He doesn't watch as he burns.

And when it's done, and there's nothing but ash left of the person he loved, he can't bring himself to leave. He feels sick, and he knows he needs to eat, knows he’s already delayed long enough that people are going to suspect him of murder once word gets out that Shisui is missing, but he just can't move from the spot. 

It's evening again when he finally wills himself to cross the water and scale the cliff. His arms shake, and as he nears the top, he considers letting go, letting himself fall. He now knows for certain that the distance is enough.

No sooner does he think it than do his own words from seven years ago ring clear:

_“There isn’t really anyone who wants to die, is there?”_

The voice sounds a bit like Sasuke, he realizes, and it surprises him. At the thought of his brother, Itachi's heart clenches. _Sasuke._ _You have to get home to Sasuke._

Again, he fights upward, repeating his dear brother's name like a mantra.

**Author's Note:**

> Itachi adopts all of Shisui's crows after.
> 
> ([This](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23070115/chapters/56970346) lovely fic chapter that I adore inspired me to include Shisui’s crows in the first place. I was also thinking about [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25275139) beautiful fic when referencing Uchiha burials.)
> 
> EDIT: Something is still bothering me about this piece, and that is the part when Itachi uses his Amaterasu. I'm not actually that knowledgeable about the details of Naruto, and I recently learned that Amaterasu is an ability unique to Itachi and Sasuke's Mangekyous. So it doesn't really make sense that Itachi would know he could do it. So I'll be revising this, probably adding a scene in the middle that explains it. Hopefully it won't throw off the flow too much. In the mean time, I'm leaving it as it is. Stay tuned.
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


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